


Suit You

by MrProphet



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-22 23:42:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10707597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet





	Suit You

“What’s wrong with this picture?” the Doctor asked rhetorically. At least, Martha presumed the question was rhetorical.

“We’re about to get killed by something that looks like it should be dancing backup for one of those German synth bands?” she nonetheless offered.

“Like Kraftwerk?” the Doctor exclaimed excitedly, looking up from the open maintenance panel. To Martha’s consternation the sonic screwdriver ceased its chirrup. “Autobahn! Brilliant.”

“You what?”

The Doctor shook his head. “No. If I had a penny for every time I’d almost been killed by a Cyberman I could’ve bought the tea at that place on the Strand. Sorry about that, by the way.”

A volley of blaster fire rocked the monitor bank that they were hiding behind.

Martha thought for a moment. “How about the fact that they were all supposed to have vanished back where they belong?”

“Nah; we’ve got Cybermen of our own.” 

“Alright, I give up. What – apart from the fact that we’re about to die – is wrong with this picture.”

“You  _will_  be… deleted!” The synthesised voice buzzed angrily in their ears. Heavy, metallic footsteps clanged towards their hiding place.

“Well, don’t you think this Cyberman is taking things a little too personally for an emotionless killing machine?”

“I hadn’t stopped to think about it,” Martha assured him. “I was too busy not getting shot.”

“A fair response,” the Doctor allowed. “It’s probably a bad habit, over-thinking on the run.”

The Cyberman rounded the corner of the monitor bank. “Do not move!” it ordered. “Move and you will be… deleted.” Again, that tiny hesitation before the word ‘deleted’.

“Ah,” the Doctor said, his tinkering half done. “You wouldn’t like to come back in thirty seconds, would you?”

Martha grabbed a can from the floor beside her and swung it up, splashing thick, black oil over the steel mask. The Cyberman staggered back, clawing at its face with gauntlets which could crush a man’s head, but which were ill-designed for wiping away oil.

“My vision is impaired!” it wailed. “I can not see.”

“Oh, well that settles it,” the Doctor crowed. He thrust the sonic screwdriver deep into the maintenance panel and reached up to throw a switch on the control panel. With alarming suddenness, the Cyberman was whisked away into the air, accelerating upwards until it stuck with a clang to a giant, magnetic crane.

“Nice one, Doctor.”

“Yes, well at that power it won’t hold long before the circuits burn out, so we’d better…”

“Get back!” Martha yelled, as the panel beside them exploded in a shower of sparks and the Cyberman plummeted back to ground level.  
The clang was even louder this time.

“Right,” the Doctor said. He ran forward and knelt beside the Cyberman. He levered open its chest plate. “Let’s see what…”

Martha hurried up after him. “What is… Oh, gross!” she exclaimed. “I mean, I’m a medical student and I think that looks minging. What is it?”

The Doctor looked down at the thing in the Cyberman’s chest cavity; a single eye looked back.

“How desperate were you?” he asked, his excitement vanishing behind the cool pity that his defeated foes sometimes elicited. “How much does this hurt?”

“What is it?”

The eye closed.

“What was it, you mean,” the Doctor pointed out. “A Dalek mutant,” he answered without pause. “Desperate, alone, hiding in whatever shell it could adapt to support it. But a Cyberman…”

“Well, it’s better than that pepper pot thing.”

“Not to a Dalek. They’re the ultimate species supremacists and that extends to their travel devices. It’s like… Hitler being forced to hide in the body of a monkey,” he explained.

“Well, there’s an analogy that invites sympathy,” Martha drawled.

The Doctor shrugged. “If there’s one thing that the Daleks have taught me in the last few years it’s that you can feel sorry for someone – or something – without having to like it.”


End file.
